We never sourced Self’s site last week because Goventosa’s name doesn’t appear there. But this particular monowheel does. According to Self, it was called the Motoruota; he found French advertisements for it dating to the late 1920s. From those ads, we see that the Motoruota went through at least two or three versions, all of the same basic layout, at one point standing 1.45 meters tall and using a 175cc single through a three-speed gearbox. It apparently made a splash in Rome in 1927 and in Paris in 1932, as we see in this Hungarian video.

According to Self, the Motoruota company was founded by Davide Cislaghi, a former electrician (and possibly a police officer in Milan, Italy) who built a more basic monowheel prototype in 1923 and patented his design in France in 1924. In that patent, we see where Cislaghi laid the groundwork for his tilting mechanism and established the general mechanical layout he’d use for the next decade or so: steering wheel, three rollers to position the outer wheel and a low-mounted, air-cooled single-cylinder engine to power the vehicle.

Interestingly, we also see from Self’s site that Cislaghi patented his design with an Italian, Geom. Giuseppe Govetosa, whose name appears alongside Cislaghi’s in the advertisements for the Motoruota. How Cislaghi and Govetosa came to know each other, we don’t know, but we’re pretty confident Govetosa is the mysterious M. Goventosa of Udine, Italy. Of the two, we’re guessing Cislaghi is the one who posed with the monowheel in the 1933 photo from last week, in the video above, and in the circa 1927 photo from Self’s site (below).

Self’s site also appears to have confirmed our suspicion that the man in the 1931 photo that started all this research is not the inventor of the Motoruota at all. Self reported that it was a Swiss engineer named Gerdes, photographed at Arles, France, on his way to Spain; he surmises that Gerdes was simply one of the few purchasers of a Motoruota.

Regarding the 1933 photo from last week, Self believes it may not have been the Motoruota at all, rather a version of the Walter Nilsson monowheel, which certainly explains some features of the monowheel in the 1933 photo that differ from features of the Motoruota. Yet that doesn’t explain why the 1933 photo appears to have been taken in France (Nilsson built his monowheel in Los Angeles).

I suspect there may be more photos and information regarding the Motoruota in some dusty archive somewhere, considering the efforts made to publicize and enter production with it. However, we’re still left wondering: What exactly happened to the Motoruota venture after 1933? And does the Motoruota have anything to do with Walter Nilsson’s monowheel?

18 Responses to “Motoruota: The Monowheel That Might’ve”

Designing a controllable monowheel is an interesting engineering exercise, but I have trouble imagining that there could ever have been a market for them beyond the circus. Is there anything useful that a monowheel does, that vehicles with two or four wheels don’t do better? Starting with there being only one point of contact with the road. That road had better be dry and tabletop smooth.

Correct. When you boil a vehicle down to its purest function, the one thing you want more than anything else is traction. All the power and style and comfort and safety a vehicle offers amounts to nothing if the tires do not correctly contact the road. In that case, a monowheel is the most untenable vehicle design ever because it directs the three main functions of a vehicle – thrust, braking and steering – through just one contact patch.

But consider the opposite end of the spectrum. Say you build a vehicle with 10 wheels, 20 wheels, whatever. Traction aplenty, and you can distribute the thrust, braking and steering among the wheels, with plenty of wheels left over for redundancy. Yet you’ve added complexity and weight to drive all those wheels. It seems to me the goal of every monowheel inventor is to build the most basic form of transportation possible, to strip a vehicle to only the most necessary requirements for forward movement. It won’t have the utility of a vehicle with more wheels, but that’s not the point.

Must be real interesting in a downhill panic stop, when the brakes lock the seat to the ID of the wheel… and the entire thing continues to career down the hill like a man in a barrel. Interesting variation, but inherently less safe and more troublesome than a 2 wheeled vehicle.

[…] Hemmings Daily did some digging into these awesome photos of men riding a ‘Motoruota’ or Monowheel. The details are hard to come by but the possibilities of zooming along in one of these is amazing to think about. […]

Well, then there’s THIS: http://rynomotors.com
Not exactly the same thing, but it IS a one wheel powered vehicle. Be SURE to watch the U-tube videos to convince yourself that it really works. This outfit is based in Portland and many have caught glimpses of them on the street, though I have not personally seen one yet.

I found this Italian video, made in Paris in january 1935, called “L’invenzione della moto-ruota” (the invention of the moto-ruota). It says : “the inventor of the moto-ruota performs with his original vehicle that, according to him, has all the requirements to compete with motorcycles.